


Audacity Is Its Own Reward

by ineptshieldmaid



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - 1960s, F/F, an extensive exercise in gratuitous sydney details, baby's first AU, background discussion of conscription and the vietnam war, everything i know about Vatican II i learned from Brides of Christ, i read an entire year of archived issues of Honi Soit for this, setting: sydney 1965, some context-relevant instances of racism / xenophobic remarks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-12-02 21:38:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11517999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineptshieldmaid/pseuds/ineptshieldmaid
Summary: There are a few things which Sara Crispino remembers about Orientation Week. The first is that, despite the best and most serious efforts of the nuns, quite a lot of off-site drinking, dancing and general disreputability is involved. Instead of individuals, she remembers crowds and atmospheres....The third thing Sara remembers from Orientation Week, although she doesn’t think about it much until later, is the red-headed Women’s girl.





	Audacity Is Its Own Reward

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts), [renaissance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/renaissance/gifts).



> Hi, Renaissance - I heard you like historical AUs and college AUs and different-sports AUs. And I know you like egregiously Australian AUs, because your schoolies AU will forever hold a special place in my heart.
> 
> So... this happened. I've never written any sort of AU before, but I hope this is to your liking!
> 
> (Citations & content notes in the endnote)

There are a few things which Sara Crispino remembers about Orientation Week. The first is that, despite the best and most serious efforts of the nuns, quite a lot of off-site drinking, dancing and general disreputability is involved. Instead of individuals, she remembers crowds and atmospheres. The crowded pub in the Lodge, the first pub Sara has ever set foot in. The crush of students all trying to enrol for the same courses. The shortcuts across campus that end with getting lost. The parade of social events - with Johns, with the other men’s colleges, with Women’s, with Johns again. She gives up all hope, after a day or two, of remembering anyone’s name, or where or why she met them. The gathering on the university lawns, when the aboriginal man - Perkins; she remembers his name if no one else's - got up to speak about the Freedom Ride, and the sense of excitement in the air, of change and possibility in the future. 

One thing the nuns do manage is to keep male visitors out of the College most of the time. Mickey’s protests of ‘but I’m her brother!’ fall on deaf ears. Sara, who really loves her brother, nevertheless breathes a sigh of relief. She sees Mickey, of course - there are socials organised with St John’s College, and university functions, and within a few days she knows Mickey’s new college mates better than she knows her own roommate. 

The second thing that Sara remembers from Orientation week is that the Quadrangle, instead of being stately and impressive, has had its lawn ripped up and some sort of temporary train track put through it, and scaffolding all over the bell tower. Instead of the solemn odor of knowledge the air is full of standstone dust and the sweaty bodies of history majors crammed in between the building works in an effort to enrol. (When, years later, her fellow alums reminisce about the colonnades and the lawns and the jacaranda tree, Sara will think of dust and building works.)

The third thing Sara remembers from Orientation Week, although she doesn’t think about it much until later, is the red-headed Women’s girl. 

There’s an afternoon tea on the leafy verandah of Women’s, and Sara, for lack of anything better to do, has gone with her roommate. The second-years who arranged the whole thing are chatting animatedly; Mary has ditched Sara to talk to some girls she met earlier that week. Within five minutes of getting here someone, some blue-eyed girl from the bush, had cooed at Sara about how _interesting_ it was to meet “New Australians”. Sara had cut that short, and now she’s lurking on the edges of the group, just watching.

A handful of Women’s girls have got into an argument about the draft. 

‘I call it cowardly,’ another girl is saying. She has the broad shoulders of a rower. ‘They’ll feel differently when Vietnam falls - after Vietnam, Malaysia, and then it’s only a short way to Australia.’

‘My father,’ a third girl says, in the kind of tone that means she assumes everyone knows who her father is, ‘says the draft is a terrible idea for the Army. No one in the service wants to fight alongside unwilling soldiers. How could they be trusted?’

‘This is ridiculous,’ someone else says, ‘It’s a violation of individual rights, pure and simple.’ She’s small, with pointed features and red hair. Redheads are a dime a dozen in the Catholic colleges, but this girl’s pale skin lacks the high pink flush of Sara’s roommate Mary or the freckled complexion of Mickey’s new mate Brendan.

The three girls turn to the readhead with an array of scathing looks. ‘You _would_ say that, wouldn’t you?’ the girl with the Army father says. ‘You’d be happy if we were all over-run by communists.’

Redhead looks daunted. ‘No,’ she says, quietly. There’s a moment’s silence, and then she seems to firm her resolve. ‘Don’t you see? The whole system of National Service goes against the democratic principles we’re supposed to be defending here!’

The girl who looks like a rower makes a face, like there’s something distasteful under her nose. ‘You’re not even Australian,’ she says. ‘What do you know?’

‘I am,’ Redhead says. ‘I’m a -’ but the other three turn away before she can finish the sentence. ‘... citizen,’ she says, to empty air.

Sara feels a twinge of sympathy. She doesn’t know Redhead, or where Redhead is from - she’s obviously not Italian or Greek. Maybe Polish? - but the other three could be so many of the girls Sara went to school with.

All the same, she doesn’t go over to speak to Redhead.

* * *

Lent term hurls itself past in a blur. Sara has classes to keep up with, College functions to attend, movies to see, and somewhere in there she’s supposed to take the bus home every other weekend. Mickey is excused, more often than not, but it wouldn’t be worth Sara’s life to try to claim the same leniency. Their Nonna wants her regular supply of gossip: no, Sara isn’t seeing anyone. Neither is Mickey. Yes, Mickey’s studying very hard. Sara is too. They’ve both joined their college tennis clubs, but they were too late to sign up for the interfaculty comp.

Mickey joins the Regiment, and that means even fewer weekends at home, and a chunk of his holiday time allocated to the army. Nonna’s lips draw thin: she reads the newspapers, too. Their father nods, and says ‘sensible boy’. Uncle Stephano, who is Nonna's brother and remembers the war in Europe, says the Communists are as bad as the Fascists, and if he were younger he'd join up tomorrow.

Sara doesn’t think Mickey actually likes the army, but he doesn’t talk about it much. ‘If you’re Reserve you can’t be called up for the draft,’ he says, and that’s that.

On weekends she’s not at home and Mickey’s not training, Sara joins Mickey and his mates and they play informal doubles tennis. Sometimes Sara drags Mary along; more often, one of Mickey’s friends will round up more girls from Sancta or Women’s. They rotate partners, and Sara tries not to be bothered by the way that Mickey bristles whenever she’s matched with one of his friends. To be honest, Sara isn’t super enthusiastic about playing with Mickey’s friends anyway - the only one of them who’s actually any good at tennis is Chris - Christ _ophe_ , as half of Sancta insist on calling him, exaggerating the French inflection every time.

Chris is an incorrigible flirt, and a third year, which means that any time Sara’s seen with him, two things happen: her average social standing in the eyes of Sancta Sophia College goes up, and Mickey nearly has an apoplexy. For all his flirting, though, Chris is the one who, at parties, manages to tactfully get drunk girls back into the custody of their friends, and too-handsy boys redirected somehow, so Sara has decided she likes him.

And then one day he turns up to their little tennis gathering with a Women’s girl in tow, and it’s Redhead.

‘Hey,’ Chris says, a proprietary hand on Redhead’s shoulder. ‘Do you guys know Mila? Women’s girl,’ he adds, as if that wasn’t easily deducible. 

‘No,’ Brendan says, eyes travelling up Redhead’s long legs, which are bare. ‘Good to meet you, Millie.’

To Sara’s surprise, Redhead seems to know who Sara is. ‘Sara, isn’t it?’ she asks. She gets the pronunciation more or less right, too. ‘You’re signed up for Rosebowl tennis.’ Her eyes are sharp and considering, and her handshake is firm and brisk.

‘Yes,’ Sara says, surprised. ‘How did you know?’

‘I’m playing for Women’s,’ Redhead - Mila - says. ‘We have our sources.’ She doesn’t smile widely but her eyes sparkle. ‘I always scope out the competition.’

‘Come on, girls,’ Chris says, ‘get your rackets and you can size each other up properly on the court.’

‘With me, Sara,’ Mickey says, but Mila turns to him, eyebrows raised. 

‘You’re her brother, right?’ Mickey nods. ‘Then it’s unfair advantage. I’ve never played with Chris before.’

‘Sara plays doubles with Chris all the time,’ Mickey says, weakly. Mila shakes her head and grabs him by the elbow.

‘Come on, champ, they say you’re Johns’ new secret weapon: I want to see how you play.’ Mickey looks a bit like someone’s hit him on the head, but he lets himself be steered onto the court and given what looks like very stern instructions on exactly how he is to play. Redhead’s hair is pulled back from her forehead in a sweatband, which highlights the sharp line of her jaw. Her hands are thin and delicate as she tosses a ball to Mickey, which he fumbles. 

‘Jealous?’ Chris asks, from behind Sara’s shoulder.

‘Of who?’ Sara asks, before she really thinks about it.

‘That’s what I was wondering,’ Chris says. He rests a hand on her shoulder and pushes her toward the court. ‘Come on, time to play, Crispy.’

‘If anyone else starts calling me that,’ Sara says, rolling her eyes at him, ‘I will kill you.’

Chris laughs, they square up on the court, and then Mila and Mickey proceed to make mincemeat of them. Which means Mila does, really - Mickey and Chris are a pretty even match on the court. Mila turns out to have a devastating backhand serve, and an amazing knack for hitting drop volleys that hit the ground and hardly bounce at all.

‘Good game,’ Mila says, either unaware or blithely ignoring the fact that she’s just taken Sara and Chris methodically to pieces, with Mickey trailing wide-eyed in her wake.

‘Good,’ Sara echoes. ‘Good game.’ 

They end up sprawled in Victoria Park in the late afternoon, Sara and Mickey and Chris and Brendan and Mila and a scattering of others Sara doesn’t really recognise. Brendan disappears for a while and comes back with a case of beer. Some of the Women’s girls have wine.

‘Hey,’ one of them says, to Sara, ‘drink up, we can’t take any of this back to College.’ She passes Sara the bottle holus-bolus. It’s shaped like a pineapple. Sara drinks from it anyway.

‘Might as well be pineapple flavoured paint stripper,’ someone says, and snags the bottle out of her hand. It’s Mila, and the paint stripper resemblance doesn’t stop her gulping down a substantial amount of it. Her throat bobs, and her hair blows across her face in the breeze, and Sara doesn’t know why she finds any of this quite as fascinating as she does.

‘Next time I go home,’ Mila says, ‘I’m smuggling my father’s best vodka back down here. I don’t care what the old bat thinks.’

The old bat, Sara presumes, is Principal Langley, who, compared to Mother Swift, is a veritable angel of lax discipline. Not so lax, however, as to permit alcohol on the premises.

‘Where are you from?’ Sara asks, and then mentally kicks herself - she still remembers the _you’re not even Australian_ conversation from Orientation Week, and the last thing she wants to do is to sound like those girls.

Mila smirks at her, like she knows exactly what Sara is thinking. ‘Brisbane,’ she says. ‘You?’

‘Leichhardt,’ Sara says.

‘Well,’ Mila says, brandishing the terrible pineapple, ‘drink up, Leichhardt.’

It’s not the worst name Sara’s ever answered to.

* * *

Rose Bowl tennis takes place on a day when Sara should be in a back-to-back series of lectures and tutorials; Sara doesn’t spare them a thought. The enthusiasm of the older girls catches her up: Women’s has dominated the year-long competition since its inception, but tennis is one of Sancta’s strong points, and it is easy to believe this really is their chance to shine. Sara, although the only fresher on the team, is one of Sancta’s strongest hopes, a fact that accords her equal parts respect and resentment.

Strongest hopes, but not a sure thing, as it turns out. She acquits herself tolerably - better than any of the other Sancta girls - surviving to the semi-final only to lose two sets to one to a third-year named Edwina. (Which third-year named Edwina, she can never remember: by all evidence half the Women’s team, and probably half the college, are named Edwina.) That leaves two Women’s girls to face off in the final, and Women’s to take the day.

‘Hard luck,’ someone says, as Sara leans against the fence and tries to gauge whether, if she gulps down her entire water bottle in one go, she’ll embarrass herself by retching it back up again.

‘She won fair and square,’ Sara says. ‘I don’t have her stamina.’ Edwina had dragged her games out, keeping them at deuce until Sara started to flag, and then slamming home the advantage. Sara had won games, too, and the first set, but the last set in particular Edwina had used to wear her down. 

‘If matches were decided by points, not sets...’ says the person. Sara looks up and sees it’s Mila: she’s flushed and swinging a racket, and Sara remembers she’d won the previous semi-final. ‘If it were a matter of points I’d be playing you next,’ Mila says. Sara stares at her for a moment, and then does the sums in her head. She might, just, have scored more points overall than Edwina did. Not that it matters, because that’s not how tennis works.

‘You’d take me to pieces,’ Sara says, too exhausted to be anything but honest. ‘I can barely stand.’

‘I know,’ Mila says, and smirks a little. ‘I was looking forward to it.’

It’s probably fatigue, or frustrated competitive drive, that makes Sara’s gut twist with disappointment.

* * *

The weather turns after Easter, and Lent term races to a close. There are fewer sunny weekend days, now, and tennis falls out of their weekend routines. Sara goes with Mickey and his friends to the cinema, instead - the same one used to go to with her school friends, when they had enough money for Saturday matinées. The white and green facade feels like home, a little bit. She recognises faces, girls from lower years at school, daughters and granddaughters of her mother’s and Nonna’s friends. 

It’s funny, she thinks. Her life now seems completely remote from the one she’d lived only a few months ago. It’s only forty minutes by bus, but the bustle of Leichhardt, with its main street and its shopkeepers who greet her in Italian and know every detail of her family’s gossip, seems very far away. Sometimes that distance aches, and sometimes it’s a relief. 

Occasionally, Chris brings Mila with him on their weekend outings. Sara is pretty sure they aren’t a couple - she’s not actually sure that Chris is interested in women at all. Some of the rumours about him are pretty… lurid. But that could be spite: Chris is beautiful and speaks three languages (so does Sara, but Sara isn’t a senior Johns boy and therefore a catch), and lets the Sancta girls practice their French on him even though the Sisters are perfectly capable of filling that role. He has favourites, of course, but they’re never the girls agreed to be most beautiful or popular: he spends his time with people like Sara, and with Mila. It’s not surprising there are mean-spirited rumours about him.

There are rumours about Mila, too. Mostly, the rumours are that she’s a communist. Sara knows she joined the protest marches against the draft, and she goes to student meetings all the time, and joined the action campaign for aboriginal rights, but none of things make someone a communist. She’s Russian, or her family is, Sara has figured that out by now, but it stands to reason that only makes them _less_ likely to be communists: if they were, they wouldn’t have had reason to leave Russia in the first place. The one time she’s seen Mila answer back to the accusation, it was to say that if the draft goes ahead she _will_ be, she will join any party that stands against it. 

There are other rumours, too. Some are the usual: that Mila sleeps with too many men, or the wrong sort of men. Sara doesn’t give much credence to those: they’re unlikely to be true, and if they are it’s none of her business. Other rumours, however, suggest that perhaps Mila does not sleep with men at all. (And not, Sara is given to understand, in the sense that most girls don’t sleep with men - lack of opportunity, college curfews, conservative families, et caetera.) No one ever says precisely what they mean to imply about Mila, not the way they do about Chris, but Sara wonders. Wonders perhaps a little too much.

‘You should join the university tennis club,’ Mila says to her, one afternoon as they’re walking back up toward the uni along Glebe Point Road. 

‘What?’ Sara frowns. ‘Interfaculty tennis is over by now.’

‘Join up,’ Mila says. ‘Later this year they’ll be selecting a team for intervarsity competitions next summer.’

‘Oh,’ Sara says. She tries to imagine telling her Nonna she’s going to Brisbane, or Melbourne or Perth, to play tennis. ‘Maybe if… Mickey might be interested.’

Mila frowns. ‘Do you two do _everything_ together?’

‘We’re close,’ Sara says, shortly. ‘And we’ve both been playing tennis since we were kids.’

She expects some kind of pushback from Mila - mockery, perhaps, or lack of understanding, but Mila just pushes her hair behind her ears and looks thoughtful.

‘That must be nice,’ she says, and Sara blinks.

‘What must?’

‘Having a brother, your own age and everything.’

‘Oh. Yeah, it’s nice,’ Sara allows.

‘I’ve got my cousin, Yuri,’ Mila says, ‘but it’s not the same. Especially since I came here: it’s hard enough to get time on the phone to call my parents, let alone…’

Sara is suddenly very glad her home - and her parents, and her cousins and her Nonna and everything and everyone else - is only forty minutes away on a bus.

* * *

‘Are you going home for the break?’ Mila says, on the last Saturday of term. 

‘Of course,’ Sara says. ‘My Nonna would come and fetch me herself if I tried to stay on!’ Mickey’s going away, with the Regiment, for some of the time. Sara isn’t sure what she’ll do: study, obviously. One of her school friends is getting married - the wedding is in the university holidays because the groom is a postgraduate. Laura started Teacher’s College this year - she’s not in College, but Sara sees her in Manning House sometimes - but thinks she might give it up.

‘And you?’ Sara asks. ‘Are you taking the train home?’

Mila shakes her head, and says, ‘Ugh, spare me. The less time I have to spend on that train the better.’

Somehow, Sara ends up taking Mila home with her for the first weekend of the holidays. 

‘She’s all alone,’ Sara says, half apologetic, down the phone. Her father hums and haws, but Sara can hear Nonna in the background demanding to know what’s being discussed without her. ‘Her family are in Brisbane and most of her college are going home, like us, but she…’ Sara does her best to lay it on thick.

‘Sara,’ Papa says. ‘We don’t know anything about this girl!’

‘I do,’ Sara protests. ‘Mickey, too. He’s friends with her too.’

‘Oh? What sort of _friends_?’ Papa asks, sharp, and Sara has to spend some time digging herself out of that implication. In the end, Nonna takes over the receiver and everything is sorted out. Well, everything except for that Sara is instructed to make sure Mila packs something _appropriate_ to wear to church on Sunday. Nonna has dark and scandalous ideas about what protestant girls wear to church, or indeed anywhere.

‘Oh, believe me,’ Mila says, laughing, when Sara broaches the topic. ‘I understand, I really do.’ There’s a weary self-deprecation in her voice, and Sara blurts out,

‘But you’re not Catholic, are you?’

Mila raises one eyebrow at her. ‘My mother is Orthodox,’ she says, and Sara doesn’t miss the specificity of the qualification. ‘I’ve stood through a two-hour ordination service in Old Slavonic - believe me, I’m not intimidated by your average Catholic Sunday service.’

‘Uh,’ Sara says. ‘Okay. We do still have a fair bit in Latin, though.’ There’s talk of that changing, which prospect horrifies her Nonna. Papa says it's long overdue, and Uncle Stephano concedes that if it has the backing of the Pope it's probably not a disaster, but Nonna’s dedication to the doctrine of papal infallibility is being sorely tested.

Sara isn’t actually surprised that Mila charms her father on sight, but by Saturday evening it’s clear she has Uncle Stephano wrapped around her finger as well, and Nonna bringing her extra slices of cake. It’s almost an anti-climax. Sara isn’t sure what she expected, but finding herself a silent third wheel while Nonna and Mila compare recipes (Nonna’s baba cake against Mila’s mother’s babka) wasn’t it. 

When Nonna asks Mila _where are you from, dear?_ , in her thick accent, Mila doesn’t stop at ‘Brisbane’, so Sara ends up learning a lot more than she would have been game to ask for on her own: about how her parents met in Shanghai, where the white russians had fled after the revolution; about they were expelled from China and Mila was born on an island called Tubabao, before they were accepted into Australia. Mila has aunts - apparently her mother’s family was all girls - all over the world now, and when she finishes her degree she’s determined to travel to visit them all.

‘I will not go back to Italy,’ Nonna says, firmly. ‘But I write letters to my cousins still, and one day perhaps Mickey and Sara will go to see them.’ Sara has heard this before - she writes letters, too, to second cousins she has never met - but this time, with Mila’s face lit up as she talks about her family in Venezuela and Germany and Canada, the idea is revitalised. She pictures herself and Mickey travelling the world, meeting their family and then joining up with their friends - Christophe has family in Europe too, Sara knows, and Mila just mentioned Germany - in different cities across the globe.

‘I like your grandmother,’ Mila says, later that night. They’re tucked up in Nonna’s bed; Nonna is in Sara’s room, because it’s easier to put one old lady to bed in there than two fully-grown girls.

‘I’m pretty sure she likes you too,’ she says. ‘More than she’s ever liked any girl Mickey brought to meet her.’ Sara is abruptly glad it’s dark, because the implications there - why hadn’t she compared Mila to any of Sara’s former schoolmates, rather than Mickey’s _girlfriends_? - mean she must be blushing bright red. She lies very still, hoping if she doesn’t do anything like cover her face in embarrassment, it will go unnoticed.

‘That,’ Mila says, wriggling right up into Sara’s personal space, ‘is because I have too much sense to ever let your _brother_ take me home.’ And then she turns over, her back to Sara’s, hums to herself, and falls asleep.

* * *

Mila dresses entirely appropriately, complete with hat and gloves, and sits demurely through church. Of course she does: Sara wouldn’t expect any less. She finds herself wondering, though, if Mila is making caustic commentary in her head; and unlike any of the other times Sara’s had good reason to suppose her friends are making fun of her family and her religion, this time Sara wishes she knew what Mila is thinking. It would be sharp, sarcastic even, but not exactly unkind. 

They file out of the sanctuary, and Sara prepares to introduce Mila to… well, everyone, they have no hope of escaping without shaking hands with at least two thirds of the congregation. Mila leans into Sara’s space a little and says,

‘Not bad. A little on the short side, but extra points for the chairs.’

‘The pews?’ Sara’s head snaps around. ‘They’re just normal pews.’

‘But you have them,’ Mila points out, ‘which is a serious improvement on some of the churches my mother’s taken me to.’

They take Mila home again for lunch, which involves not only Papa and Nonna and Uncle Stephano, but Aunt Marcella and Uncle Roberto and their children too. Eugene, the oldest cousin present, brings his fiancé. The adults all talk in Italian, and Sara’s generation in a mixed patter of Italian and English. Sara tries to stick to English, for Mila’s sake, but Mila doesn’t seem to mind.

‘You should see my aunts,’ she says, when Sara tries to apologies. ‘When they’re together they talk in English, gossip in Russian, and swear in Chinese.’ 

Eugene leaves early, to drive his fiancé home, and he offers to drive Mila too. Sara goes with them, and a funny feeling comes over her as they fumble around for coats and shoes. Sara ends up helping Mila on with her coat, like Eugene does with his fiancé. Eugene kisses his girl on the cheek as he does, and for a moment, Sara has to fight down the instinct to do the same to Mila.

‘Everything okay?’ Mila asks, and that means she caught the consternation in Sara’s face.

‘Great,’ Sara says. ‘Everything’s… fine.’

* * *

Trinity term begins, and continues, in a flurry of excitement and anticipation regarding Commemoration Day. The weeks between the start of the classes and that celebrated occasion might as well be marking time: more than half the campus is utterly taken up with talk of floats, Revue acts, parades and pranks. Even the solemn halls of Sancta Sophia college are abuzz, especially once dire warnings are issued about the consequences to befall any student engaging in unladylike pranks, spectacles or political agitations.

Sara signs up to collect money - one of the few components of the Commemoration Day parade which Mother Swift deems suitable for young ladies. They’re raising money for a school for handicapped children, so on the day itself, Sara traipses around town with Mary, a bucket between them and winning smiles on, drumming up donations. They collect a fair bit of money, and come to the conclusion that the richer the donor is, the more likely he is to approve of a pack of University students festooning the city with shaving cream, peculiar pranks, and discarded underwear.

Mickey does not spend Commem Day collecting money. The Johns boys - lead by one Christophe Giacometti - have obtained a genuine hearse, and donated it to the SRC for the procession. After staging a fake state funeral, and processing across town, they end up with the hearse in Hyde Park, and devote themselves to practical research. How many students can be squeezed into a single hearse? 

The answer turns out to be 94. And while this experiment is going on, attracting the attention of most of the milling students - including Sara and Mary, who have handed in their collection buckets and joined the crowd - someone climbs the Archibald fountain and fits a brassiere onto the statue of Apollo. The fountain, and indeed Apollo, is already festooned with underwear (men’s), but is generally agreed to be much improved by the additional garment. 

‘Who do you suppose did that?’ Mary asks, when the hoots of delight divert their attention toward the fountain. 

‘One of the boys,’ Sara says, firmly. ‘Someone with sisters, probably.’

‘How horrid,’ Mary says, scrunching her nose up. ‘Imagine realising it was yours!’

‘Some of us,’ says a voice behind Sara, ‘keep better track of our undergarments than that.’ It’s Mila, and Sara can’t help herself from smiling. Mary looks affronted; but then, Mary never liked Mila much.

Mila looks at the statue for a moment, and a satisfied smile creeps over her face. ‘I think it suits him, don’t you?’

‘Not at all,’ Mary says, frostily. ‘If you’ll excuse me, Sara, I have to…’ and she ducks away without further explanation.

‘Oh, dear,’ Mila says. ‘Have I scared your friend away?’

‘Maybe,’ Sara says, and she should be annoyed, but she finds herself laughing. ‘Where have you been? Did _you_ see who put that up there?’

‘The real question,’ Mila says, not answering that, ‘is is there a name in the bra?’

‘A name? Why would there be…?’ Sara starts, and then remembers: her own name is done in embroidered labels on all her underwear, like it was in her school uniforms. Likely every former boarding school girl in both colleges has the same thing.

One of the boys - Sara thinks she recognises Jack ‘The King’ Leroy, one of Mickey’s yearmates and notable trouble-maker - has scaled the fountain, apparently determined to inspect the mystery garment. There’s a moment, and then he shouts ‘Who the hell is Lucy Tucker?’ across the crowd. 

Mila is looking very much like she’s hiding something. 

‘Mila,’ Sara asks, ‘do you know this Lucy Tucker? Is she a college girl?’ Women’s might be a little less strict than Sancta, but Sara doesn’t doubt that Principal Langley is just as capable as is Mother Swift of bringing down hellfire on the head of any Women’s girl found to have pulled a stunt like that.

‘Never met her,’ Mila says, serenely. She tucks her arm into Sara’s. ‘What do you say we get out of here?’

Behind them, Leroy loses his footing, yelps, and splashes down into the fountain.

‘I’ve got to get back,’ Sara says, but she follows Mila down toward the Museum station entrance anyway. ‘I’ve got to change before the Revue this evening.’

‘Me too,’ Mila says. ‘We’ll stop at Sancta and pick up your stuff, and get ready in my room, how about that?’

‘Won’t your roommate mind?’ Sara asks. She knows perfectly well Mary would complain if Sara had guests in their room - especially Mila.

‘She’s away,’ Mila says, breezily. ‘Something about, uh, intervarsity chess I think?’

Sara scoops up her best outfit - not her Sunday best, that lives at home, but the brighter, more youthful blue dress she has for formal dinners and occasional parties - and follows Mila across the campus and into Women’s. Technically she’s not supposed to be invited into the dorms, but with so many girls at Women’s, who’s to notice one more?

Mila peels off her cardigan when they get inside, while Sara is spreading her dress out on the bed. She turns around and realises. 

Mila is definitely not wearing a brassiere under her blouse. 

Mila notices her staring. She looks down, and then back to Sara. ‘Ooops,’ she says, widening her eyes. ‘I must have lost it.’

It takes Sara a second to put two and two together, and then she claps her hands over her mouth. ‘You didn’t!’

‘I did,’ Mila says, and cracks up laughing. ‘I had help, but I did it!’ She flops back onto the bed, jostling Sara’s dress.

‘I can’t believe you!’ Sara says, hovering over her. 

‘I can’t believe me either!’ Mila reaches out and grabs her wrist. ‘I’m disgraceful. Not the sort of girl you take home to meet your grandmother, not at all.’

Sara, suddenly giddy, drops onto the bed next to her. ‘What Nonna doesn’t know,’ she says, ‘won’t hurt her. But oh, Mila! What if you were seen?’

‘I was wearing,’ Mila says, solemnly, ‘a wig. And a fake moustache.’ Sara stares at her. ‘And,’ Mila adds, as a final flourish, ‘A St Paul’s rugby guernsey.’

Sara has to muffle her shrieks in Mila’s shoulder. 

‘The problem with secret acts of daring,’ Mila says, after a moment, ‘is you don’t get to bask in admiration afterwards. Everyone will be buying beers for your mate Chris and his stunt with the hearse, but my deeds will remain unknown!’ She flings a hand out, dramatically. It lands on Sara’s dress, crumpling it further. ‘Ah, well,’ Mila sighs, ‘they say audacity is its own reward.’

‘Well _I_ admire you,’ Sara says. ‘Goodness, Mila, your _own bra!_.’

Mila turns to her head to look at Sara, and the moment hangs for a second. ‘Do you?’ she asks.

‘Do I what?’

‘Admire me?’

Sara’s brain goes a bit scrambled, for a moment. It’s full of images of Mila: Mila decimating Sara and Chris on the tennis court; Mila arguing politics; Mila copying out babka recipes from memory; Mila declaring ‘I’ll join any party that opposes the draft!’; Mila climbing - sweet Mary mother of God, Mila climbing the Archibald fountain and decorating Apollo with her _own brassiere_.

‘Uh,’ Sara says. ‘A bit, yeah.’

‘A bit?’ Mila’s face is very, very close to Sara’s own. Close enough to - well.

 _Audacity is its own reward,_ Sara thinks, dizzily, and she ducks her head and drops a kiss on Mila’s mouth. It’s just a brief thing, more a symbolic gesture, but Mila goes silent and stiff with surprise.

‘What…’ she says, when Sara pulls back. 

‘I think,’ Sara says, somehow managing to sound nonchalant about it, ‘a kiss is the normal reward for deeds of derring-do, isn’t it?’

Mila blinks for a second. ‘Well,’ she says. ‘I suppose it is.’ She reaches out and takes Sara’s hand, pulls it up and presses her lips to it. ‘I’m flattered,’ she says, eyes twinkling, breath lingering on Sara’s knuckles. ‘Fair lady.’

There’s a long, awkward moment, and Sara breaks it by turning her attention to the Revue. ‘We should get ready,’ she says, picking up her dress and shaking it out again. ‘What are you wearing?’

‘Oh,’ Mila says, nose crinkling. ‘Just… whatever. Do you think I can get away with trousers?’

No, Sara does not think Mila can get away with wearing trousers to a University function. Mila sighs, and opens up her side of the wardrobe. Sara turns her back and shrugs out of her blouse and skirt, stuffing them into a bag that she can pick up from Mila tomorrow.

‘Sara?’ she turns around, and Mila is standing very close to her. She’s wearing a brassiere now, but her skirt and blouse are gone. Her nylons are digging into her waist, Sara notices.

‘Mm?’

‘If I get a kiss for climbing the Archibald fountain, what reward do you think I should have for…’ she lets that hang, for a second, and then finishes, ‘winning Rose Bowl Tennis, for example?’

‘That was,’ Sara says, stupidly, ‘months ago.’

‘I know.’ Mila opens her eyes wide. ‘And yet: no reward. All the glory to Women’s College, and none to me!’

‘I,’ Sara says. ‘Are you _trying_ to get me to kiss you again?’

‘Maybe,’ Mila allows. Then, hurriedly, ‘No, I mean, not if…’

Sara stares at her. Thinks about rumours, and propriety, and about nice girls not going around with boys. Thinks: bollocks to that. She reaches out, rests her hand on Mila’s cheek, and steps just that little bit closer. 

She _means_ to kiss Mila, actually kiss her properly, but she chickens out. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing,’ she says. ‘I’ve never… not even.’ Not even with boys, she thinks, and when did _that_ become her order of priorities?

‘Me neither,’ Mila says, and she laughs. ‘Isn’t it _fun?_ ’

It’s open to debate which of them actually starts the second kiss, but either way, Mila is right: it _is_ fun.

**Author's Note:**

> Regarding race/ethnicity: this isn't a story *about* racism or *about* the ways that Australia in the 1960s was kinda shitty toward southern and eastern european migrant groups. I'm not equipped to write that story, and also Renaissance's DNW list excluded 'heavy focus' on racism etc. However, it's an issue. It would've been negligent and kind of icky of me to transplant characters into 1960s Australia without addressing the fact that this would shape their experience and relationship with institutions like USyd, the colleges, etc. So it's there, it's present, it is part of the characterisation (esp in terms of Mila interacting with Sara's extended family) but I've tried to handle it lightly.
> 
> Side note: there are a couple of mentions of the indigenous rights movement on Campus - in 1964 USyd admitted its first indigenous students, including young activist Charles Perkins. Mid-1964 the group Student Action for Aborigines formed, and were participants in the early 1965 Freedom Ride (modelled on the US civil rights movement). This isn't actually a plot point in my story but I don't think you could be on campus in 1965 without being aware of this. In text I have used the term 'aboriginal', as 'aboriginal [noun]' is the least offensive of the terms and phrasings in common use in 1965 ('Indigenous' would now be more common).
> 
> Special thanks to the friend who allowed me to borrow her family's migration history for Mila. :)
> 
> Historical data:  
> * I took a lot of USyd trivia from back issues of [Honi Soit](https://digital.library.sydney.edu.au/handle/123456789/23752). 1965 was an interesting year for student politics - the major opposition to the introduction of the draft was getting underway, in addition to the indigenous rights movement noted above. There were student protests against visiting dignitaries from Indonesia, and heated criticism of the way the Aus govt was managing PNG. For all that, there *wasn't* much of a feminist presence on campus - the closest thing was the Women's Union, which managed Manning house as a eating & study space for women students. All the reflections I could find from alumna (eg [here](https://www.usu.edu.au/getattachment/Get-Involved/wom-n-of-the-usu/WE-ARE-WOMEN-Low-Resolution.pdf.aspx)) re the Women's Union describe the mid-sixties on campus as conservative in terms of dress, sexual mores, and gender roles - this alongside the increasingly radical socialist and anti-war politics of the period. (The colleges, of course, were especially so: Women's didn't start permitting girls to wear trousers to formal dinner until the 90s, and Sancta had curfews up until the late 90s if I recall correctly.) 
> 
> * The Bell Tower on the Quad was renovated throughout 1965 (which is when the kangaroo gargoyle was added, fun fact), which necessitated the ripping up of the lawns and a fair bit of disturbance. I highly recommend the post-O-Week issue of [Honi](https://digital.library.sydney.edu.au/static/flexpaper/template.html?path=/bitstream/handle/123456789/23752/1965_38_02.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y); it's spoof of the whole thing is one of the few actually funny articles produced that year.
> 
> * St Johns College did obtain a hearse and stuff 94 people into it as part of the Commemoration Day parade and associated stunts [in 1965](https://digital.library.sydney.edu.au/static/flexpaper/template.html?path=/bitstream/handle/123456789/23752/1965_38_10.pdf?sequence=8&isAllowed=y). Decking the Archibald fountain in underwear was a common Commem stunt (although I presume this was normally exclusively men's underwear); the whole parade was by this time acquiring a reputation for disorder and disreputability, which would eventually end with the cancellation of annual commem day celebrations in 1975.
> 
> * Please behold the viticultural horror that was [Pineapple Pearl Wine](https://twitter.com/ozkitsch/status/768741448468471808), produced by a young Wolf Blass. Local variations of the German Pearlwien were reviving the Australian wine industry in the late 50s and 60s, but as the practice of drinking wine with meals was at this time largely the province of southern european migrant communities, the new fizzy wine blends were marketed as a party drink. Often in alarming flavours. We have Barossa Pearl to thank for the gift that is the South Australian wine industry now, but it was a long and kitschy road between there and here.
> 
> Finally, a tennis related fact from USyd 1965 that I somehow didn't manage to fit in here: early in the year, at the first of a series of lectures on sex organised by the Student Christian Movement, the Rector of St Paul's College described sex as 'not like tennis'. Make of that what you will.


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